Certain CAD/CAM drawing tools exist that include elliptical arcs. To simplify the user interface, these tools typically fix certain of the ellipses' parameters. For example, a common, simplified drawing technique used for creating an ellipse is to force the ellipse to be parallel either to the x- or y-axis, and then have the user draw a box into which the ellipse is to fit. Other drawing tools allow a user to manually enter (e.g., type in) the elliptical parameters, which can provide some design flexibility.
Certain CAD applications import and export Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) data including elliptical arc segments. SVG is a vector-based CAD format that enables users to create dynamic interactive graphics that can be resized, animated, rotated, etc. in real-time. Each elliptical arc segment is specified in SVG with five elliptical parameters plus the endpoints of the segment involved.